


Family

by orphan_account



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, all the gallaghers are mentioned but it's mainly kinda introspective, and all the other messed up things that happen on the show, brief mentions of canon rape and bipolar disorder, is sammi's surname even gallagher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 19:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3423440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sammi learns what family means to the Gallaghers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> this is mainly trash but apparently 5x06 made me kinda care about sammi and want to see her developed more as a character rather than for comedic value

If there was one thing Sammi had learned from her time living with them, it was that the Gallaghers were a family of circumstance rather than blood. It didn’t matter to them that she was Frank’s daughter, that by definition she was their sister. To them a sister was a bond born out of an acquired closeness, not shared genes.

It was clear to her through the neighbours who visited the house frequently, never knocking to announce their presence, just wandering straight into the kitchen to strike up a conversation with whoever they found. It showed through the man she’d tried hitting on at the bar, with the dark hair and the knuckle tattoos, who called over almost every day despite the fact that the boy he longed to see wasn’t there. Even the middle Gallagher child, Ian, was a reminder of it. She knew she wasn’t supposed to know, but the walls were thin in the house and whispered conversations travelled easily into unwanted ears. She’d heard Fiona and Lip discussing it, hushed conversations that included incriminating information. Ian wasn’t Frank’s son at all but a child born of an affair between Monica and an uncle Sammi had never met. He bore the same biological relationship to the Gallaghers as she did, but he had grown up with them and therein laid the difference.

Sammi had never had a real family, not the way that the Gallaghers did. The others rolled their eyes at her and muttered under their breaths about the daughter that followed Frank like a lost puppy and chased him like she was afraid of losing him. They all found pity in her desperation for her father’s attention and she never truly understood why until she heard Debbie whisper one day: _“She’ll learn.”_

And learn she did. It didn’t take her long to realise that Frank’s promises were just words in the wind; lies he told to serve himself. He didn’t care for the daughter he had right in front of him or the grandchild he didn’t even know about, if he had he would have found her sooner. As much as it hurt, Sammi was learning to stop making excuses for that.

If Frank had really cared, she thought, then the evidence wouldn’t stand out so clear to her now. She’d told herself that the reason he had neglected her for so long was that he hadn’t known. That he hadn’t known where to find her or hadn’t known that she existed, though Frank had already proved the latter wrong. But then she looked at the family and the children he had known about for twenty one years and the evidence spoke for itself. Fiona, barely more than two decades old but seeming two decades wiser, had been to jail and married a man she’d known for less than a fortnight on an impulsive decision that had probably seemed better at the time; Ian had ran off and enlisted in the army, still too young to do so legally, leaving his family behind for weeks before anyone thought to look for him, and was currently in the hospital being treated for a mental illness that should have been addressed long before now; Debbie in her haste to lose her virginity had raped a boy more than five years older than her because no one had ever spoke to her about the laws of consent; Carl hadn’t even started high school yet he dealt drugs after school for a bit of spare cash; and even Liam, the youngest of the lot, had fallen victim to the family circumstances, being hospitalised for cocaine ingestion before he was old enough to speak. The only one who seemed to be doing okay given the situation was Lip and even he had a panic about getting a girl pregnant before the age the law stated he could legally have sex.

Frank was usually too intoxicated to know the half of it.

The Gallaghers didn’t care for blood relations. No one had to be a product of Frank or Monica’s fucked up relationships to be considered family. They just had to stick together, through all the shit life threw at them. The others had plenty of practice in that, but Sammi was willing to try. They were all fucked up in their own ways, but it didn’t matter because they were together and they were family.

So she didn’t complain as she made pancakes for her younger siblings and sorted out the lunches. She stayed cheery as she gave Debbie advice on her first day of high school and sifted through Carl’s schoolbag for anything that could be classified as a weapon. Fiona had done this for years, it was about time Sammi got to partake in the family dynamic she’d been denied for so long. It was difficult, God knows looking after six children wasn’t easy, but she wanted to prove herself; that while her siblings didn’t yet consider her part of the family, she was a Gallagher and there was no changing that.

She sat down to her own breakfast beside Chuckie once the younger kids had gone to school and sipped her coffee with pensive disregard. She may not have been part of the family yet, but she would be, she told herself. It would just take time.


End file.
